Inclusive Education

Inclusive education, while being closely linked to equity, aims to strengthen the capacity of school systems to reach out to all students (Ibid.) by responding to the diversity of their needs and ultimately guaranteeing self-worth and a sense of belonging. It means that education systems must be abl...

Inclusive education, while being closely linked to equity, aims to strengthen the capacity of school systems to reach out to all students (Ibid.) by responding to the diversity of their needs and ultimately guaranteeing self-worth and a sense of belonging. It means that education systems must be able to implement mechanisms that foster a proper environment for the well-being of these students, an environment that allows them to express their full potential. It should make them feel safe, achieve the best performance possible and, when applicable, feel in accordance with their own cultural values and representations while being enrolled in mainstream schools. It is the role of policy makers and educators to address these challenges together, guaranteeing the educational achievement of all while strengthening intercultural understanding and social justice. Key to this definition are the following: - A focus on the **on-going nature of the learning process**. As a result, the project aims to adopt a life-course perspective and approach, examining issues of coherence and coordination between different levels of schooling and education and interactions between formal and informal learning opportunities afforded to students. - A focus on the **need to offer quality education for all while respecting diversity**. The project conceptualises the objective of respecting diversity not as the narrow protection against discrimination or the middle ground development of compensatory policies, but as a broad ambition to ensure that the unique knowledge and talents of diverse learners are valued and included in frameworks used to benchmark education quality. The notion of self-worth is also crucial for understanding how individuals value themselves in the context of diversity. Self-worth is understood as the emotional component of self-esteem and meant as the appraisal of one's own personal value (Eromot and Levy, 2017\[28\]). - A focus on **students and communities**. The project considers the social belonging of individuals to communities and the tensions and opportunities that embracing diversity in education entails. The development of inclusive education policies builds on anti-discrimination policies and the identification of compensatory mechanisms in education to create systems that are affordable, accessible, acceptable and adaptable to learners' needs (Osler and Starkey, 2005\[29\]).